Where to eat Grisette de Montpellier in Montpellier: 2 editor picks

A small grey-brown sweet the size of a peppercorn, made from honey and liquorice and rolled until the surface goes matt. It tastes of dark honey first, then of liquorice root, and it is the city's own.

The grisette belongs to the same medieval world as the Montpellier medical faculty, founded in 1220 and still the oldest working school of its kind. Apothecaries in the Ecusson traded in spices, honey and liquorice as pharmacy rather than confectionery, and prescriptions for coughs and sore throats were dispensed as sweets. The name is usually traced to the grey working dress of the women who sold them. What survives is a honey and liquorice ball with none of the fruit or nut of later French confectionery, an unfashionable flavour that has kept the sweet a local rather than a national item.